Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Tuesday August 16, 2011 @09:39AM
from the get-the-best dept.

Some nameless reader noted a surprising twist in the tale of Cyanogen, an android modder once cease and desisted by Google. "Samsung Mobile has hired one of the homebrew market's most notorious and successful Android hackers, Steve 'Cyanogen' Kondik, best known as the creator of the CyanogenMod for Android."

They're doing exactly what MS did with the Chevron team. Hire the talent to keep them from doing things you don't support while making it look like they're going to do something special for the community

They're doing exactly what MS did with the Chevron team. Hire the talent to keep them from doing things you don't support while making it look like they're going to do something special for the community

You forgot to mention creating a lot of money for the company and a stockpile of new patents.

I don't think Steve Kondik is the type that would stop supporting what he started. Plus there are a bunch of other devs that also work on it. Samsung gave 5 of the CyanogenMod devs free Galaxy S2 phones and only asked that they make CyanogenMod work on it. Hiring Steve may allow for Samsung to ship their phones already running CyanogenMod. That gives them 1up on other vendors, hardware that officially supports CyanogenMod.

Samsung has been anything but hostile towards the CM team. I think this will make Samsung phones more codeable, but unfortunately take Chris away from the CM team, or at least decrease the time he has for them. They still have tons of talent with them. I gotta agree, using the "our phones are even more customizable" is a good angle, if only they'd let you get rid of the crap they bundle, and forcing you to use Bing. That's why I'm swaying away from the S2 phones, and looking at the Bionic.

Verizon's left the Droid-branded phones alone, but have replaced many of Google's standard apps with Bing versions on others like the LG Revolution, Samsung Fascinate and Continuum, and Sony Xperia Play. They've also been pushing their VCAST apps more and more.

In what world do you live in? Unless signed over, Kondik would still hold the copyright to CyanogenMod. Samsung might own rights to whatever he worked on after being hired IF that was stipulated in his contract, or at a minimum during work hours if not otherwise specified in his contract, but nothing would give them the copyright to the name or the whole project.

You know...it is entirely possible that this dude was in the market for a new job and decided to use is proven experience working with android interfaces to get one. He could have applied to HTC and Motorola too while saying "look at what I have...maybe I can help make motoblur not suck?"

Its not like we see a press release from Samsung saying that they sought out this guy and hired him and acquired rights to CM (and you had better believe they would issue something)...My guess is that he got a pretty goo

That's great... now, when are they going to do that for their other phones, such as the Intercept? Not all of us can afford a Galaxy S2 (or, more to the point, are using a carrier that such a fancy phone is available on).

I don't think Steve Kondik is the type that would stop supporting what he started. Plus there are a bunch of other devs that also work on it. Samsung gave 5 of the CyanogenMod devs free Galaxy S2 phones and only asked that they make CyanogenMod work on it. Hiring Steve may allow for Samsung to ship their phones already running CyanogenMod. That gives them 1up on other vendors, hardware that officially supports CyanogenMod.

I wouldn't say that Samsung would officially support CM but Samsung recognise that they make the hardware, all of their money comes from the HW and they've got practically no stake in the software beyond making sure it works on the HW.

But on the other hand, they know the Android community is a force to be reckoned with and clearly want to remain onside so that they will continue to support and recommend Samsung products to non technical people.

It is. Hopefully that's the first thing google fixes. I still have no idea why they lock down the boot loader. They should at least give people the ability to disable it with a physical switch of some sort if they're worried about remote exploits.

Cyanogenmod is a great ROM but, I assure you, it isn't the only one. Samsung would go broke before they could hire all of the Android modders out there. Not to mention the fact that the cellphone version of Android is available in its entirety in source form from AOSP so they'd have to buy Google while they were at it. Ha. Last but not least, they gave a Galaxy S 2 to the Cyanogenmod team a couple of months back explicitely condoning the porting of cyanogenmod to it. It looks to me like they are search

I've been running a Samsung Galaxy Prevail for a few months now, upgraded from my G1, which was way long in the tooth. I don't really use the smart phone functionality much at all, mainly use it for calling/texting and now will sometimes check in on G+. I appreciate that most apps run, but needed a 3rd party mod to reduce the bloat that Samsung/Boost included on this phone. ShabbyMod did that, I do hope for a Cyanogenmod release though, as Shabby isn't much more than stock android, but works quite well.

The Market application is just that. An application. It adds a ton of value to Android but it is not Android anymore than iTunes is OSX or Internet Explorer is Windows despite MS' protestations to the contrary. To put an even finer point on it, it is only in the last few years that people have any expectation of a default application delivery mechanism be included with an operating system. Does that makes Windows not Windows because it doesn't have an analog to the market? Of course not. With Windows,

With Windows, you can search the internet and download what you need. As it is with Android.

Unless your bank won't make its check deposit application available as a downloadable.apk file. I visit Chase's page about its Quick Deposit application [chase.com] on my device, but all it says is "Get the Chase Mobile App from the App Store or Android Market." Specifically, "Chase Mobile App" is not clickable.

Thank you. I have downloaded it and will install it on my device once I can answer the following question that someone brought up last time: How should I verify that the application available from Dropbox is identical to the one that Chase distributes via Android Market and not an attempt to defraud? If Chase were distributing the.apk on Chase.com, I could do due diligence on the connection's SSL certificate. This page [blogspot.com] recommends using jarsigner.exe, but all I get from jarsigner -verify -verbose -certs com

I'm going to cautiously take this as a Good Thing(tm). Samsung makes decent enough hardware, equipped with awe-UNinspiring software, so they could certainly use the help. While we might be looking at the end of his involvement in Cyanogen, we could be looking at the beginning of the first real Android fork/distro. Meanwhile, had he let Google hire him, we never would have heard of him again - he'd have disappeared into Google's Android development team.

Steve, if you happen to read this, just one request for future Samsung kernels: Bluetooth HID and SPP. Please. You can even skip the downstream implementation for now. Just get the damn kernel-level stuff in there, so anybody with a rooted Samsung phone and stock Kondik-era kernel can take it from there and make it work later. It's the kernel that kills us dead in our tracks every single time, because rolling a custom kernel from scratch inevitably seems to mean giving up Sprint 4G, working network-accelera

As I understand it, the problem is that Samsung's kernel uses BlueZ as a module, but it was compiled without support for HID and SPP. To add HID and SPP, you'd have to recompile and rebuild the entire module, including the parts that interface with the largely undocumented and Samsung-proprietary Bluetooth chipset itself. In other words, you can't just build a module for HID and SPP and clamp it onto the existing module to extend its functionality. It's all or nothing -- total replacement, or nothing at all

Seeing as Samsung said that any versions of Android above 1.6 wouldn't work on the original Galaxy (i7500) and the community got Froyo working on it nicely - I'd hope they're bringing him in to show the other developers in house how to work with Android properly rather than the less than optimal code they put out now.

As for locking bootloaders, etc - others have been just as capable of breaking them:-)

This is just another move on the chess board. Google bought Motorola which will invariably give Motorola the inside track on Android to some extent. Samsung realized that while their hardware has been quite good their software has been severely lacking in both quality and updates. This hire makes perfect sense, it allows them to produce higher quality software (the goal being to improve upon Google's not just dress it up pretty) with a better update policy. If they actually allow their software to be run like CM has been (and force it through the providers) then it puts LG and HTC in poor positions long term.

This shows some support on the part of Samsung for open source, although not in the way I had been hoping. I've heard that Samsung is working on a Linux-based phone, apparently with shell. Is this correct? Anyone else confirm/refute this? I heard from what seemed to be a reliable "on the inside" source a year ago, but with the way the economy is going, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a very real project that met a very real end.

Any inkling of news would be appreciated, however, since I am hoping I d

I own a lowly HTC Desire, unlocked and rooted, and I've used it with the stock HTC Sense as well as many other custom firmwares. I have also seen HTC Sense, Motorola Blur and stock Android on other phones

Cyanogen is by far the most advanced of all. If you really are interested in unlocking your phone's true potential, it's the only choice. My HTC Desire running Cyanogen is about twice faster than when running Sense, both in benchmarks and real world use. Maybe if HTC were to update their OS to 2.3.5 like Cyanogen, the performance differences would be reduced, but that hasn't happened yet AFAIK.

As the article states, tethering is enabled by default. And it also allows the user to select per app permissions, something even the stock Android will not do. And if you're adventurous, running the Nightlies guarantees the latest technology. It's actually not as dangerous as it sounds, because in almost 100 Nightlies only 2 or 3 were duds and restoring from backups took 15 minutes.

Whichever phone I purchase next, the main requirement is that Cyanogen supports it. For me it's even more important than camera resolution, screen size or storage space. I mean with a fast SD card and a few tweaks I can fit 100 apps on my HTC Desire.

Absolutely. My OG Droid with less RAM and a decidedly aging chipset but running Cyanogenmod 7 is faster than my girlfriend's stock Galaxy S. It stuns me that a rag-tag group of enthusiasts can so thoroughly spank a billion dollar corporation's highly funded professional developer group. I wish Steve the best as I have enjoyed his work starting with my old G1 and now with my OG Droid that, honestly, without cyanogen, I would have chucked in the trash long ago. Hmm... Maybe that's why the hardware makers

>It stuns me that a rag-tag group of enthusiasts can so thoroughly spank a> billion dollar corporation's highly funded professional developer group.

A developer group that, like any, is thinly-spread across dozens of individual projects at any moment in time, and never has enough time to do more than make it work well enough to satisfy Marketing & Management. Companies like HTC and Samsung are starting to realize that a dozen guys porting CMx to their hardware is roughly equivalent to quadrupling t

Except the Cyanogenmod-using crowd consists of those who are most likely to actually fix their own phones when broken.

I replaced the digitizer and the LCD screen in my Motorola Droid. I'd never have paid someone to do it for me, but as a tinkerer geek it just seemed like the right thing to do. The digitizer was free from someone else's water damaged phone, while the LCD screen is a cheap Ebay part that looks and works just like the original.

Yes, but they're *Apple* customers, so deep down inside, they know that Steve does it because he loves them and it's for their own good.

GM has customers too. Some are masochistic enough to buy GM cars over and over again just because They Believe In GM. Others feel compelled to buy only American cars, and show their disgust by buying a GM car, then a non-GM American car, then repeat the cycle. I use GM as an example, because they're the textbook example of a company that just plain doesn't "Get It", has nev

It stuns me that a rag-tag group of enthusiasts can so thoroughly spank a billion dollar corporation's highly funded professional developer group.

It shouldn't be that stunning. I have an engineer friend who worked in Korea with one of the ex-managers of Samsung's Galaxy S project. Some amusing insights into Samsung's business strategy:

The Galaxy S was actually a beta-prototype. They knew of problems with the hardware and software. When management saw the prototype unit, they decided to ship it. That's right, they went ahead with a worldwide release of a prototype design. The Samsung manager told my friend "Wait for the next hardware - that's the r

It stuns me that a rag-tag group of enthusiasts can so thoroughly spank a billion dollar corporation's highly funded professional developer group.

I'd hardly call the CM community "rag-tag" but I'll answer that point. Some of the CM releases were abysmal. frequent reboots, radio dropouts, FC galore, pretty much to the point that you had to go back to the previous version. Whilst I haven't seen this in recent days the fact that CM can put out a release with a lot of bugs without any recourse gives them the

Is that a US thing? My wife has an Incredible S (purchased in Taiwan) and I have a Galaxy S2 (purchased in Germany). Both allow tethering. Or am I missing something?

Thanks for making me aware of the per app permission thingy, sounds like I should give Cyanogen a try.

Yes, it is a US and Canadian thing. Basically when the major carriers purchase a phone from the manufacturer, they intentionally have some functionality removed that competes with their paid options. This is justified (in their eyes) by the fact

Not everybody is willing to pay hundreds more for these. None of the three largest carriers offer a discount for bringing your own phone; all the plans are priced under the assumption that the subsidy for a new contract phone is included. T-Mobile USA used to give a discount called "Even More Plus", which amounted to $10/mo for voice and $20/mo for voice and data, but this will probably go away once AT&T completes its acquisition of T-Mobile's USA operations.

It can be cheaper to buy outright, depending on the carrier and plans.

The article mentions T-Mobile USA, which is soon to be acquired by AT&T. It also mentions walking into a carrier's store to ask a human being about no-contract service. I asked an AT&T representative about such plans back in March, and he reacted with surprise that another carrier would offer no-contract plans cheaper than contract plans.

Unfortunately most Android device manufacturers have stupidly decided to put a nearly useless amount of internal flash ROM in their phones and then try to balance it by including a decent sized but typically crappy and slow microSD card. My Evo has 512MB of ROM, of which about half of that is available for use on a stock CyanogenMod install (HTC's OEM "SenseUI" ROM is even worse). Some Android apps can't run off SD through the Google official method and others don't run well, but if you have a modded ROM

It would be pointless. Android is free and costs nothing to put on a phone. A phone without any OS whatsoever would be a warranty-claim nightmare, because you'd never be able to distinguish between a phone that doesn't work because of a hardware defect vs a phone that doesn't work because the user is an idiot. A stock firmware means you can take the phone that allegedly doesn't work, reflash it (if necessary) to that firmware, and declare the user to be an idiot with baseless claim if the phone works as adv

The only thing they wanted stopped was the inclusion of the Google Apps on cyanogenmod by default. Now the ROM comes without google apps, but you can easily download an installer that adds them back in.

As I understand it the C&D wasn't for modifying Android, it was for bundling the Google Apps in with the modified Android. (You can still get them with Cyanogenmod, but now they're a separate download.)

Where's the sense in offering an open platform and then sending out cease-and-desist letters to people who modify it?

And that, my lost-carrier friend, is the existential question. Why would Google do that?

Consensus is that Google has a slightly different meaning for the word "open". They support AOSP, which means that the Android core OS is open in the more-or-less conventional sense. AOSP is, after all the beginning of awesome mod roms like Cyanogenmod. But Google's sense of openness ends where their own

CyanogenMod tends to try to target the sweet spot between performance and battery life. You may not get as good of battery life (then again, you may) but likely you'll have a faster, lower latency experience with CyanogenMod.

Could this be Samsung's way of hedging its bets against Google closing Android now that it is buying Motorola? Cyanogen Mod doesn't rely on any of the Google code that isn't open source so it could be forked to cut Google out all together if need be.

Unlikely...Far more likely its for its patent portfolio of over 14000 patents. And since Motorola have been in the mobile business for a very long time Ill bet theyhave a substantial catalogue of patent missiles ready to fire over the fence to anyone who wants a mudslinging match with Google / Android.

This almost certainly a response to the shit flinging against android thats fashionable at the moment.

Maybe it is a good thing. With Motorola in capable hands, HTC offering a mechanism for unlocking bootloaders, and Samsung possibly having CyanogenMod support, we might see this effort become something as an option right off the top for Android users.

It at least would get a consistent interface and tools across handsets.

What would be awesome in the future would be to be able to have devices ship with their default ROM, but with a few mouse clicks, be able to download CM and switch to it.

Which is just one of the things that is absolutely wrong with the way IP laws work right now. If you have a license or permission to use something, it shouldn't be illegal for someone else to help you manage/move/alter that content in ways that it is legal for you to do yourself.

Maybe not for LG and HTC (and the other fringe companies) but it could potentially create an arms race between Motorola(Google) and Samsung to release better ROMs now that Google owns Moto. That would, at least in theory, benefit all Android users as it would push the overall quality of the OS higher even at the most basic levels.

Exactly. For the most part, Samsung has always been plagued by good (if not great) hardware, crippled by last year's software. Bringing Steve on board means they can now give him the keys to the candy store and let him directly play with the deepest secrets of Samsung's hardware without having to go all the way and make those same closely-guarded secrets public. Think about real-world Linux. How many Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora users actually build their own kernels? Statistically, none. Between reasonably in